State budget cuts slice deep in Harris CountyIt could lose $50 million for public safety, social services if budget approved

CHRIS MORAN, HOUSTON CHRONICLE |
January 26, 2011

Proposed state budget cuts could cost Harris County government nearly $50 million a year, according to a legislative analyst's rough estimates, rolling back or eliminating state allowances for dozens of programs that include mental health services, auto theft prevention, alternatives to jail and a school for juvenile offenders.

Local officials have for months been warning of the problems state cuts could mean for Harris County, particularly in the area of mental health.

The numbers obtained by the Chronicle on Wednesday are the first attempt to translate the Legislature's wallops into Harris County's welts.

The numbers began circulating on the same day local department heads began testifying before the county budget director on the service cuts, layoffs and furloughs they already are contemplating to slash a possible 10 percent from the county's $1.3 billion budget.

If the state cuts come to pass, the sheriff's unit dedicated to auto theft would be halved and a camp for youth offenders would have to turn away kids who need its intensive counseling to prevent them from becoming career criminals, county officials said.

In other cases, the state cuts would transfer the burden onto a county government already contemplating hundreds of layoffs.

Social services slashed

For example, the state mandates that the county run a school for children expelled from their neighborhood schools for weapons and serious drug offenses. But the starting-point budget would take away $3 million of the $12 million the state sends to cover the cost of busing, educating and counseling kids from all over the county at a school near Reliant Park.

Tom Brooks, the county's juvenile probation director, said the school would be "crippled" by the proposed cut and that he would ask the state to lift the mandate if the proposed spending plan is what emerges from Austin this year.

The state's budget shortfall is estimated at $15 billion to $27 billion through the next two years. The base state budget proposal assumes no tax increases or tapping of the rainy day fund savings account, meaning lawmakers are expected to make sharp cuts in public education and social services.

The mental health services cuts impact a variety of programs that target adults, children, the developmentally disabled and the autistic. The state would reduce what it sends to the Harris County Psychiatric Center, money for medications and funds for crisis services.

Sheriff Adrian Garcia, County Judge Ed Emmett and MHMRA executive director Stephen Schnee have been saying for months that such drastic state cuts will transfer the bill to county agencies as people who could have benefited from treatment in community centers end up in emergency rooms and jail cells.

"Harris County will pick up the tab for them to be staying in jail and the mental health care they receive in jail, which is much more expensive than in the free world," sheriff's spokesman Alan Bernstein said Wednesday.

Threat to public safety

The state budget in its current form would eliminate the entire $1 million in state money spent on auto theft prevention and detection in Harris County. The Houston area accounts for about 30 percent of the state's stolen cars, according to the sheriff's office. Sheriff's spokespeople were particularly puzzled by the auto theft cut, since the money comes from a surcharge in motorists' auto insurance premiums and not from taxes.

"We're already in a tenuous situation, walking a tightrope, and if they do take away that funding, that's yet another action that poses a threat of lowering the level of public safety in Harris County," Bernstein said.

The county's director of legislative relations, Cathy Sisk, said her office will work on refining what still are preliminary estimates of the impact on Harris County.

"I'm hopeful that the figure will be smaller, but expecting that it will be larger," Sisk said.